Warning, very odd alert!
Right I have been trying to wrap my head around the world of Haiku Funeral for a while now and really do not think I am anywhere near doing so but here goes for an attempt. Honestly I don’t actually understand the Japanese art of Haiku in the slightest either and try and avoid all forms of the Japanese verse as they simply warp my fragile head. Although the lyrics of this lot are not full of them (there may well be the odd one) it should be said they are profoundly poetic and one should perhaps approach that with this in mind. The poeticism is incredibly dark and indeed nightmarish in the extreme, it suggests that the works are perhaps inspired by Laudanum and other such opiates, this is a group who previously released an album called ‘Funeral Assassination in the Hashish Cathedral’ so if you are looking for a musical trip of William S Burroughs proportions you are undoubtedly in the right place.
Let us get things in context with the duo behind this project. Firstly we have William Kopecky who appears to have a huge amount of projects behind him, often described as in the progressive rock mould. Based in France his collaborator here is Dimitar Dimitrov from Bulgaria who apparently has worked as a black metal musician and singer as well (metal archives lists him as Inferius of Corpus Diavolis and Unhealthy Dreams those dreams obviously spilling over here). Odd combination indeed.
So how to describe the music then? Well it certainly is not easy to categorise. There are moments of dark ambience, a bit of an industrial backbone, it is all highly experimental, avant noir and etched in blackness. There is evidence of progressiveness as well as jazz. The bass sound is particularly prolific and at times funky even; it has the sort of Gallic feel to the playing that reminds me of the soundtrack to Luc Besson’s Subway if that makes any sense. I listen to this and I think of the dark underground labyrinths of that movie, the poetry of the likes of Baudelaire and perhaps even Christian Death’s Roz Williams along with the prose of the aforementioned Burroughs and Bukowski. I could be way off the mark but that is what strange slithering numbers like ‘Black Moth Rising’ remind me of. The sang and chanted poetic lines sometimes meld into evil sounding snarls and I think of the likes of GGFH making music inspired by serial killers, it is only the truly deranged who would probably fully understand this.
It’s pointless doing this as a track by track review, in fact there is no track list on the booklet or case although there are ten numbers which you can follow lyrically in the booklet itself. Perhaps the track list is on the disc, but that is playing. Perhaps this just adds to the weirdness of it all. Ghostly warped sounds ooze out my speakers all coated with that plinkity plonking heavy bass sound. There are underlying chorals which are a bit Goblinesque, a dreamy Inferno bubbling under. We move on to the clanking of industrial machinery and a lone voice, we could well be in the killers lair, I do not feel at home or comfortable there at all but am lulled perhaps into a false sense of security by the calming voice reciting its delirium amidst the pulsing electronics.
Hopefully you get some sort of idea what to expect from this now, I feel like I have written a review in the attempt to describe it all and get a better understanding of this for myself. I still could not say where I stand on it entirely even after around ten listens. I certainly like it more than I dislike it and feel it is one of those albums that I am going to put down for a couple of months and then come back to it again and see what happens.
This nightmare is incredibly lucid and probably only one for dreamers who are keen to explore uncharted territories within the minds eye!
(6.5/10 Pete Woods)
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